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WHAT I WORRY ABOUT:

My health, my hair. My kids, my courage. My weight, my wants. My verbal slips and bursts, my horrifying slips of protocol, politeness, empathy, understanding. My focus on Myself. Selfishness, arrogance, sloth and productivity. My fear, my failure.

Cancer taking my other kidney. The MRI scanner. The valium not working.

That time in 5th grade.

That time last year.

That time he—

The world, the tRumpocracy, tRumpocalypse, tRumpandemic, November 2020, walls and exclusions, financial inequities, that Capitalism is based on the few acquiring the Capital on the backs of the laborers and that I knew/didn’t know I, former boss-owner Capitalist, did it too.

Worry this year, this month, this week, this minute.

WHAT I DO TO COPE WITH WORRY:

I do, do, do (or did): therapy, couples therapy, SSRI’s, carbs, ice cream, wine, tequila. Work, work, work. Talk talk talk. Write. Purchase Very Expensive Online Hair Products.

WHAT WORKS:

Nope.

WHAT I WORRY ABOUT MOST:

is what I worry about most.

(I can’t pick, you pick. No wait, don’t.)

WHAT WORRYING GIVES:

Migraine. Weight Gain. Inertia. Fatigue. more, more, more. (Time for a nap.)

Then, finally, a driving, burning need to fucking get out from underneath it, the giant Open-MRI hamburger bun of Worry, stretching wall to wall, inches from my panic breath going a zillion miles a minute.

NEXT:

Close your eyes, force slow breaths, crawl from under, open the laptop.
Chunk the work, discrete goals, doable doable.
Open the box, and allow the wonder of where you are right now, this place, this moment, fill you to bursting with the mind-blowing reality that all that worry did this. All that worry got you here. The worry begat the need, the need begat the action, and that has never failed, not in the overarching scheme (though, yeah, the months of hamster-wheel spinning seem stupid now), doesn’t matter all the wasted worrying, all the wasted napping, all of it, every single last bit of it, was necessary to be here, now.

Your voice is your worry, your language is complicated by your angst, made complex and rich and lovely.

What, you worry? Embrace, love it, pet it. Feed it like that sourdough starter (ugh, and then ew, wash your hands, how does the damned spoon always get that floured sticky gunk all over, oh god, now it’s in your hair.)

Alright regroup!

NOW:

Looked squarely in the face, Worry is worry. It’s worse than the thing itself once the thing arrives, to be sure. But my muscles that build the intricate and specific imaginings of what-if-disaster and when-that-happen-armegeddon, are honed, sharpened and useful, so useful, for imagining the best, the most spectacular, not outcome, not result, but now. Fictional now, real now. Now, now. Angst and all.